The present invention generally relates to mobile devices, and more specifically to mobile device location tracking.
Determining the geographic location of mobile devices is an important problem, and has applications in a plethora of location-based-services. With the wide and growing adoption of smartphones, there is a rapidly growing set of location-based-services designed for use with smartphones. For example, location information is used in navigation applications, location-based mobile advertisements and mobile asset tracking, to name a few. The primary mechanism by which mobile device location is determined currently is through the use of Global Positioning System (GPS) application on the device, which can determine the device location in an outdoor environment using satellite beacons. The main disadvantage of using GPS for continuous location tracking is that it drains battery energy quickly. Therefore, a GPS within a mobile device cannot be turned on for extended periods of time.
Another method of determining device location is through the use of device connectivity information; for example, based on the WiFi access points that a device can see, its location can be determined relative to the known locations of those access points. The drawback of this method is that the deployment of WiFi access points is not centrally controlled, their IDs have conflicting and changing names, and they have very sparse deployment outside urban areas and small coverage areas.
Yet, still another method of continuous tracking is through the information of the mobile device's association with base stations. The base station ID and the mobile device association are used. This provides only very course grained tracking which may not be sufficient in some applications.
Yet another method of location tracking is by triangulation of mobile device's location through the measurement of wireless signals between the mobile device and multiple base stations. This also provides only course grained location estimates which may not be sufficiently precise in some applications.
Further, current location tracking of mobile devices use continuous location tracking. This continuous tracking consumes a significant amount of battery power. This continuous drain on battery power is undesirable in mobile device location tracking.